Autumn...question mark?

I developed an exaggerated sense of time passing at a young age. Lots of factors contributed to this pretentious concern, and in fairness it is hard to single one out. Yet, if I was subjected to the Spanish inquisistion, I'd have to throw it out there that Ken Barlow from Coronation Street was responsible for at least a half-dozen of the vicariously experienced mid-life crises I had before I hit fifteen. Who could ever forget him sitting despondently at a table, constructing a suicidal triangle from painkillers while the muffled refrain of auld lang syne bled through the wall of the Rover's Return? For modern fifteen-year-olds he probably still is a weird omen of the grave - he's been that freakishly unchanged over the years.

Regardless of Ken Barlow and Jimmy White (another story, another blog) I'd say I started properly freaking about the unstoppable trajectory of time the moment I saw the youth-hungry Nazi characters crumble into skeletal oblivion during the climax of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I was ten at the time.


I have an idea where a lot of this comes from. Every year, my mother looks wistfully out of the kitchen window, squints, and says "no sun again and summer's already over." This would be acceptable enough at the end of August, but she normally announces it half-way through July. You see, no mattter how sweltering the weather is, my mother's measure of when the sunny season definitively ends relies upon the second she sees a thistle seed floating past her kitchen window. One tiny seed and that's it. Summer is over, the grave is a year closer, and the circle of life has betrayed us all. I normally battle against the pessimism, but this year was so bleak and wet that I had to give in.

Also, some kids exploded bangers behind our shed earlier. Floating thistle seeds, falling leaves, and mushrooms are all well and good; but, in this time of climate change, the scummy crack of a banger is probably the most reliable indicator of seasons on the turn. The clinching harbinger of Autumn 2009, however, was the drunken daddy longlegs I spotted skittering comically down the toilet handle 'cos it has no real brain and someone left the bathroom window open. That was autumnal, but also sad.

Here is a seasonal album cover by Jans Jelinek. It is easily one of my favourite album covers of all time. It is so teeming and mulchy, so old yet so alive. Even the fungii on the tree look jurassic. There is a touch of the fantastical or the fairytale about this image in spite of it likely being a recent, arty nature photo snapped in the black forest or somewhere.


MP3: Jan Jelinek-Universal Band Silhouette

The music on the Kosmischer Pitch album is a deep hybrid of glitchy, downbeat techno and kosmischer Krautrock, with the emphasis on techno. It is by an artist called Jans Jelinek who pioneered a lot of glitch-driven music under the 'Farben' moniker. On this record, Jelinek wraps barely recognisable krautrock samples in a swarming, crawly, avant-garde film of glitches that belies its own warmth. Once it lets you in it is a comfort blanket of sound, it is organic and welcoming - albeit in a weird way - just like that greeyeeheen cover art. Lithiummelodie 1, from the same album is a stunning example of his strange, living and almost botanical samples.

MP3: Jans Jelinek-Lithiummelodie 1